More Than Words
by PackMaster
Summary: Aylen thought that moving to La Push was going to be just like every other move she and her family had made before. But soon after arriving, Aylen and her twin brother Silas realise that they have roots in La Push that they never even knew existed. And as Aylen is drawn into the secretive and mysterious world of the infuriating Paul, Silas begins to change too. M for themes, lang
1. Prologue

**Prologue**

* * *

_Forks, Washington._

Apparently our family heritage led us back to this dinky little Native American reservation that was situated right on the coast of Washington state. We'd never really talked about where we came from, as a family. It had always been apparent to us; Michael, Silas and I that we had some sort of... different ethnicity in our background. Our skin colour would attest to the fact that we were different from the all American kids we'd grown up around in the other places we'd lived.

Despite the obvious differences, however, we'd never discussed it. Discussing where we came from would inevitably bring up our father, and that was something that nobody was willing to do. Especially our mother.

The car slowed down as we came into Forks; the tiny town through which you had to go to get to La Push. Mom took a sharp left turn into an old looking gas station, which was far too busy for the day that was in it. The sky was grey with cloud, and little droplets of water were splashing unrelentingly down onto the smudged windscreen of our little Ford.

Bringing the car to a stop next to a gas pump and unclicking her seatbelt, Mom turned around to look at Michael and I in the back seat. Silas was snoozing soundly, his head resting against the passenger window.

"Go in and pay for the gas, will you?" Mom instructed me, pulling a couple of bills out of her purse and handing them to me. "Pick up a few snacks too. Some chips or something. We're not going to have anything in down at the new house." Next to me, Michael turned his head away, frustrated. At the angle at which my mother was looking at me, he was unable to see what she was saying. He had been lip-reading for most of his life, but there was nothing to be done if he couldn't actually see the person's mouth.

The inside of the filling station was a grimy looking place, stocked to the brim with convenience confectionery and car accessories. I ambled slowly around the store, picking out packets of chips and candy bars. I ambled so slowly and aimlessly in fact, that I ended up ambling right into another person.

I looked up, stunned and came face to face with a petite little girl with dark skin and black hair. She looked like my mother. She scowled at me like it was obviously all my fault that we had collided.

"Sorry," I muttered, blushing.

The girl assessed me for a moment before flipping her hair. "Whatever, watch where you're going," she told me curtly. Her eyes flicked from my face until they were looking at something over my shoulder. "Paul, I thought you were waiting in the damn car. All you ever think about is food." The girl brushed past me and I blinked in surprise. I followed her with my eyes to see that she was batting her eyelashes and looking up at a... tall and incredibly handsome man.

He was looking down at the girl with a look on his face that indicated that he wasn't really interested in what he was saying at all. As I looked at him for a little longer than was truly appropriate, his eyes flicked away from the girl and towards me, as if he could feel me watching him. As he returned my gaze, his deep brown eyes went wide and his mouth dropped open.

Mortified, I spun around quickly and hurried to the till to pay for the snacks and the gas. I was so flustered that I didn't even realise that the gangly boy behind the counter had short changed me until I was back in the car and my mother began to exclaim over how expensive the snacks must have been.

Michael, seeming to notice how flustered I was signed to me, "What's up?"

I moved my hands quickly in a reply, "Town's full of weirdos." Michael smiled before turning to look out of his window again as we left Forks behind and headed down a narrower, bumpier road leading towards the coast.

* * *

_Hey there, people. This is just the prologue of my new story. I hope someone (anyone) reads this. I will be pretty depressed if nobody reads it or reviews. I'm about to upload the first chapter too :)_

_Ciao, Lily x_


	2. B-L-O-W-I-N-S

**B-L-O-W-I-N-S**

* * *

"One great thing about this new house," Silas said as we carried boxes into the house, "is I don't have to share a bedroom with Michael again."

We'd spent the first night in the new house sleeping in empty bedrooms, much to my mother's dismay. The movers had been delayed, and we'd had to spend a night with makeshift sleeping spaces made of piles of our clothes or any of the other things we'd brought with us in the car. It had been uncomfortable and I'd woken up with a terrible ache in my lower back.

Michael rushed out of the front door, coming towards us and he high-fived Silas on the way. I gathered he wouldn't have been so friendly if he'd known what Silas had just said about being grateful for not having to share a room with him any more.

Inside the house, Mom was overseeing the movers as they brought in our heavy furniture. At the moment, she was still trying to decide on a layout for the living room; and has made them move the sofa and armchairs into three different positions already.

Silas gave me a look, and was in the process of raising his hand to sign something to me when our mother turned around and caught sight of us. Silas dropped his hand with an innocent grin plastered on his face.

"Oh, darlings, just put those boxes over there," Mom instructed us, gesturing towards the corners of the room where there was a growing pile of boxes with her hand. "We'll sort through them later. Where's Mickey?" She looked around her as if she had somehow missed his tall frame when she had previously surveyed the room.

"He's getting more boxes," I informed my mother as I followed Silas to the corner of the room to dump the box of DVDs I was carrying. I'd tried – and failed – the pick up a box of my books that I'd insisted on bringing with us, despite my mother's suggestions that I sell the lot of them. Silas had given me a tired look before silently picking the box up himself.

"How do you like the new house then?" our mother asked us, spreading her arms wide as if to behold her new masterpiece. She thought of herself as an artist, and this house was her new canvas. I knew that we'd have a long time to wait before she would fully be satisfied with the house and we'd be able to properly settle in.

Silas smiled dotingly at my mother. "It's nice," he said nonchalantly. We'd moved around so much by this stage that there wasn't really anything else to say in the face of a new house and a new place. We didn't know how long we were going to stay here; it could be weeks, months or years. But I doubted it would be forever. It was never forever.

"It's nice," Mom mimicked Silas, putting her hands onto her bony hips. I had always been envious of her slender physique, when I had had to struggle since I could remember to not become morbidly obese. Silas and Michael both benefited from the slim, athletic physique the same as my mother did. I was an odd ball; the only chubby one in the family and I hated it. "It's nice," my mother repeated a second time. "Is that all you have to say, Silas? This place is beautiful. I think it's going to be very good for my aura." She turned her raised eyebrows on me. "And what do you think, Aylen?"

"It's..." I tried to think of a word other than nice. "Nice." There seemed to be nothing more fitting. It was what we always said, Silas and I. The new houses were always _nice. _

My mother huffed and turned away from us, her attention fixing back onto the movers who seemed to have messed up part of her layout, which frustrated her to no end.

For the rest of the day, we helped our mother instruct the movers, and when the movers seemed to have finally had enough and left, we got instructed on how to arrange the furniture ourselves. Our mother was one of those women who ceaselessly handed out orders to everyone else and didn't even realise it.

I was so tired when I finally made it into my bed that night – and so grateful to actually be sleeping in a proper bed – that I was out almost as soon as my head hit the pillow.

* * *

The next morning, Michael and I decided to take advantage of the good weather which we understood to be an oddity in these parts, and we left the house after breakfast to do some exploring of our new home. La Push was unlike any other place we had lived before. Our most recent home of a small town in Texas had been vibrantly different; the days there had been hot and sweaty, and the people friendly and slap-a-thigh.

From the looks we received as we walked through the tiny reservation – and tiny it was – it was obvious that people noticed the new people in town. It wasn't surprising. I doubted that anything went unnoticed in a place as small as this.

In an odd way though, I knew that this place felt more like home than any place had in a long time. I knew that this was where it had all begun; the whirlwind romance that had been my mother and father's brief marriage. Silas and I had never known our father, due to the sad fact that he had taken off when we were just young – that much we knew. Michael was a different story, concerning a different father who had died when Michael had only been two years old.

Michael touched my sleeve to get my attention and I turned to look at him. His hands flew skilfully through the air as he signed to me, "People are staring."

We had made our way to the edge of the reservation, only to be surprised by a nice sandy beach. Obviously everybody else had had the same idea, and were taking advantage of the good weather. It wasn't crowded – I doubted any place in La Push ever was – but there was a sizeable amount of people soaking up the sun.

I clocked a group of young looking people scattered about between sunbathing and throwing a Frisbee back and forth; an old couple strolling along the beach hand in hand, with a small dog furiously scampering after them; a family of four sitting down on a picnic blanket and opening Tupperware containers; and two girls sitting side by side in deep conversation.

Pointing between Michael and myself, I spelled out with my fingers, "B-L-O-W-I-N-S."

Michael grinned knowingly at me. "What did we expect? Especially in somewhere as small as this." He was right. Whenever we moved into a small town – which was quite often because our mother seemed to prefer small communities – the people were always overtly curious about the new people, and didn't seem to think that staring constituted as rudeness in such a situation.

Michael and I strolled along the beach at leisurely pace, stopping briefly to pet the old couple's small dog before continuing on. The beach was long, probably stretching out for a mile or more.

"I think there's a dance school in Forks," Michael signed to me as we made our way back through the reservation towards our new house. He was looking at me curiously, his thick eyebrows raised slightly above his handsome blue eyes. The rest of us; Mom, Silas and I all had brown eyes, which was normal for out skin tone and background. Obviously Michael had inherited some of his features from his father, who I remembered vaguely and knew that he had been a pale and handsome man with sandy hair and shining blue eyes.

"I don't know if I want to dance any more," I signed back to my younger brothers. "I've probably forgotten all of it." I had taken up dancing when I had been just eight, but my dance education had been sporadic and inconsistent due to our frequent moves. In our previous home in Texas, there had been no dance school in the small and sleepy town, so I hadn't danced properly in over a year.

"You're a natural dancer," Michael signed back to me. It struck me how unlike other boys his own age Michael was. He was observant to a fault, and wasn't afraid to say deep and meaningful things that other boys would have been chagrined to say aloud. I suppose it helped that there was barely any chance of anyone overhearing a conversation that he was having.

I laughed, gesturing down at my plump body with my hands. "A natural dancer? I don't think so."

Michael sighed and waved off my words. "Just because you don't look like the other dancers doesn't mean you're not as good." And this was why people loved Michael. He had a knack for being able to make people feel good about themselves in such a casual way that you wouldn't believe that he was even trying to be nice. When he said things like that, it was as if he was just stating a fact.

I smiled at my brother but didn't reply as we climbed the few steps that led up to the small porch of our new house. It was unfamiliar, but I knew we would get used to it. The house was larger than our house in Texas had been; where Silas and Michael had been forced to share a bedroom.

Just inside the house, our mother was standing in the hallway doling out instructions to Silas as he stood facing a wall, attempting to hang one of her paintings. I recognised the canvas; a swirling array of greens and greys and blues, depicting a view from the edge of the cliff. It was one of her best pieces, and she was proud of the compliments that it always earned.

"Oh, just a little to the left, dear," Mom instructed Silas, cocking her head a little to look at it. She was dressed eccentrically in a loose terracotta coloured shirt and a flowing blue skirt with a belt slung around her slender hips. Her black curls were piled in what looked to be a messy pile on the top of her head – even though it was probably an intricately perfected hair style. "No, a little back to the right- up a bit- no. Oh, hello, dears! How was your walk? How are you liking the res- oh, right there, Silas! Oh no, you've lost it. Back a little to the left." She flicked her gaze curiously towards Michael and I, expecting us to answer her question.

Annoyance flared within me. Our mother loved us all dearly: that much was obvious. But she was not good with Michael. Of course she hadn't expected one of her children to be profoundly deaf, but that didn't make it okay for her to be so ignorant. I knew how frustrating it was for Michael when he couldn't figure out what was going on because people didn't look at him when they were speaking. Our mother wasn't as good at signing as Michael, Silas and I, but she was able to understand and convey her thoughts well enough.

I quickly signed to Michael what our mother had asked us.

"Tell her that I like the beach," Michael instructed me, knowing that he wouldn't be able to tell her himself because she had flicked her gaze back to the picture hanging. "And that we should get a dog." Michael then left me in the hallway, heading towards the kitchen at the back of the house.

I grinned at my brother. Every time we moved house, Michael would ask for a dog and every time, Mom would refuse point blank.

"Michael says that he likes the beach and that he wants a dog," I told my mother as I walked over to stand next to her, directing my own eyes towards her painting. It seemed to be hanging straight to me.

"There's a beach?" Silas asked over his shoulder, adjusting the painting again slightly. "There, Mom?"

"A little more to the left, maybe?" Mom replied. She appraised me with heavily lashed brown eyes. "The beach is nice, isn't it? I used to spend a lot of time there when I was a kid." Her eyes glazed over and she got that look that I knew meant that she was thinking about my father. Seeming to shake herself out of her reverie after a few moments, she carried on, "This painting is of a scene here, you know?" Her hand flew towards the painting. "Oh, right there, Silas! Ah, brilliant. Thank you, honey."

"You painted this of a real place?" Silas asked, standing back and falling into line with our mother and me to admire his handiwork.

"Yes, there are cliffs around these parts. I used to go sometimes and sit at the top of one of them in a secret spot and sketch," our mother explained to us nostalgically, her eyes lighting up. "It was only after I left that I thought to paint it. I guess I missed my spot at the top of the world, with the sea and the sky stretching out ahead of me, going on forever, that I thought I might recreate it for myself."

"Will you take us there?" I asked our mother, slightly in awe of the beauty that I had always taken as imaginary, but now knew was actual place.

My corner of my mother's mouth lifted in a small smile. "Oh, no. I had to find it myself, and that's what made it special. There's a difference between going to a beautiful place that you know exists, and stumbling upon a beautiful place that you had no idea about." Sometimes, despite all of her eccentricities, my mother could come across as a very wise woman.

"Wow, deep," Silas murmured sarcastically and my mother rolled her eyes at him. I was about to join in when we were all surprised to hear a knock at the door. I whipped my head around, and through the frosted glass of the front door I could see two figured standing outside of our house.

My mother cocked her head to the side and moved a hand to touch her cheek. "Oh, I'm a mess. I can't go greeting people looking like this," she worried, moving towards the stairs at the end of the hallway. "I'm going to go fix myself up. Answer that, will you?"

As our mother hurried away, Silas and I exchanged a look and headed towards the front door together, almost excited at the prospect of meeting new people.

"We'll have to install the doorbell soon for Michael," I noted as I reached for the door handle and swung the door open. In all of our houses, we installed a doorbell that caused lights in the corners of each room in the house to light up, in order to alert Michael to the presence of a visitor.

On the other side of the door stood a short and stout woman with a severe, short black and grey hair framing her pretty face. Her mouth was stretched into a cheerful smile as she looked up at Silas and I. Behind her shoulder stood a huge and bulking... man-boy. There was no other word for it. He was too massive to still be a boy, but the soft roundness of his face and youthful glint in happy eyes told me that he couldn't have been much older than me.

"Hello..." Silas greeted them hesitantly. They hadn't said anything for a couple of moments, and I was practically bursting with curiosity as to just who they were.

The woman seemed to take this as her queue to speak up. "Hello there. My name is Sue Clearwater, and this is my son Seth. We just thought we'd pop around to see how you're settling in and to see if there was anything we could do to help?" Seth raised a hand in a slight wave as his mother introduced him. "My son Seth, as you can probably tell, could lift anything you need lifting. And he has some friends who would be willing to help too."

"I... I think we're okay," I replied, remembering the way the movers had been completely under my mother's spell the day before. "For moving stuff anyway. The movers came yesterday."

Sue smiled brightly at us again. "That's great! It's so nice to see a few fresh faces on the reservation. We don't get many new people around here. Oh! I made some cookies for the family to say welcome." Sue held out a bright pink plastic food container towards me, which I took gratefully.

"Would you like to come in, Sue?" Silas asked, turning on his charm as he smiled brightly at the pair of people at the door.

"It wouldn't be an inconvenience?" Sue asked, raising her eyebrows.

"Not at all," Silas assured her. "Our mom's just upstairs sorting some things out, but I'm sure she'd love to meet you." He ushered Sue and her massive son into the house and I led them towards the kitchen. There were stools set up next to the counter in the kitchen, and it was one of the only places in the house that wasn't laden with open boxes spilling out their contents.

We found Michael in the kitchen, sipping on a glass of milk. His eyes brightened as he saw that I was leading some new people into the room. Sue went right up to him and smiled.

"Hi there," she greeted him in that friendly way she seemed to have. "I'm Sue Clearwater. It's nice to meet you."

Michael smiled back at her, and I was happy that she had spoken directly to him. That way, he was able to read her lips. He waved briefly at her before turning to Silas and me and signing that he was happy to meet her too, and that his name was Michael.

"He's deaf," I informed Sue and Seth when they exchanged a glance. I laid the box of cookies down on top of the kitchen counter. "He told me to say that he's pleased to meet you too, and that his name his Michael. And my name is Aylen."

"I'm Silas," Silas piped up, grabbing a plate from one of the cupboards. He opened the box of cookies and began laying out the treats on the plate. They did look yummy.

"And I'm Mindy," our mother announced, gliding into the room. I could tell she had been primping upstairs; her hair was slightly more ruffled in a perfect faux-messy look and there was a new coat of mascara and lipstick on her face. Her face was the picture of welcoming, her teeth visible as she smiled prettily at our visitors.

Sue suddenly spun away from Michael to face our mother, her eyes wide. As she saw her face, our mom's smile dimmed a little. "Mindy? Is that really you?"

Silas and I exchanged a look, and Silas translated what was going on for Michael, who could see neither of the women's faces. It hadn't occurred to me that people would really recognise our mother. We had never been known anywhere before, so the possibility of her being known hadn't even registered in my mind. But I couldn't help but admit that it made sense. If this was where she was from originally, where our native people had lived for generations, of course there would still be people around that would recognise my mother.

"Oh!" Mom gasped. "Sue. What... How are you?" My mother smoothed her hands over the material of her skirt that was covering her legs. She looked nervous, which was a very strange thing indeed. My mother was lots of things, but I couldn't remember ever seeing her nervous.

Sue cleared her throat and put her little hands on her hips. "I'm well, thank you. It's been a very long time since anybody last heard from you. We didn't think we'd ever see you again, let alone see you move back into this house."

_Back _into this house? Had our mother lived here, in this very same house, before? I furrowed my brows and a glance towards my brothers revealed that they were having similar reactions. It had never been a secret among us that our mother had secrets, and we had all accepted it. But now, she seemed to have brought us right back to the centre of her secrets and we still didn't have a clue what was going on.

My mother raised her chin a little, staring down Sue. "Yes, well. Circumstances, you know. Besides, I thought it would be good to bring my children back to where they come from. Their heritage is important, don't you think?" My mother moved further into the room and she patted Michael's shoulder as she walked past him, ignoring the confused look on his face.

Sue turned so that she could follow my mother with her gaze. "Yes, I do think," Sue agreed, though her tone didn't imply that she was truly in agreement with my mother. "Joshua came back some years ago. Told us he didn't know where you were." Sue's eyes flicked towards us and my mother froze in place.

"I am not discussing Joshua with you right now, Sue," my mother said coldly. Seth made a noise of protest over how my mother was talking to his own mother. I flicked my eyes over to him and glared at him. They were in our home, and they did not get to be rude to us in here.

Sue nodded, accepting my mother's refusal to broach the subject of whoever Joshua was. She slowly made her way over to Michael and touched his arm, looking up into his face. Michael looked nervous, his eyes wide and his cheeks pink as Sue scrutinised him. I was about to walk overt there and make her leave my brother be when she spoke, "He's not Joshua's, is he? He's only half Quileute."

I bit my own tongue as my mouth snapped closed. _Not Joshua's. _As in, not Joshua's child. And if Joshua had come _back _here looking for my mother... that meant that he was probably the father that Silas and I had barely known. Our mother had always told us that his name was Joe. It wasn't that much different, but it was different enough that neither of us had connected the dots.

"Sue, I don't see how that's-"

"He was looking for us?" Silas suddenly asked. His hands were clenched into tight fists, and I knew exactly how he was feeling. My chest was tight with pain and anger and... and hope. Our father, the one who had abandoned us when were only babies had come looking for us? Had come back to his home in the hopes that his wife and his children might be there. This had never been our home, though, and we had never been here. Silas and I were born in a hospital in Boston, only minutes apart from each other; and up until now, that was where we had come from. But now... this was where we had come from. Without even knowing it, we had always been tied to this place by our blood, and our heritage.

My mother's eyes were wide now and she gulped. "Sue, you seem to be upsetting my children. Perhaps we could have this talk another time?"

I could tell that Silas very much wanted them to have whatever this talk was right now, but he didn't move to stop my mother as she led the Clearwaters towards the front door. Michael was looking confused and was signing to us to ask what had happened. He wasn't getting any answers, because both Silas and I were getting ready to jump on our mother with our questions as soon as she came back. It could be deadly to our cause to give her any time to come up with an excuse not to answer our questions right now.

"Well, that was a blast from the past, wasn't it?" Mom mused nonchalantly as she came back into the kitchen. She picked up one of Sue's cookies and bit into it delicately, raising her free hand to her lips to prevent crumbs from spilling out. "Oh, these are lovely."

"Why would you lie to us about your father's name?" I asked her suddenly. Out of all the question I could have asked her about what had just gone down, the reasons for why she lied to us about our father's name was the only one I could think of. I knew that it was probably one of the least important issues that had been brought up, but it had suddenly seemed so important to me.

My mother closed her eyes for a second before opening them and staring down at the counter, gliding her hands across it before finally leaning on it. "I knew that coming back here was a bad idea," she said finally, and I felt the sudden urge to reach out and slap her. Perhaps it would give her some more sense. Without looking up, or meeting our probing stares, she continued, "Your father's real name was Joshua, it's true. But I always knew him as Joe. That's how he introduced himself to me, and that's what I always knew him as when we were married."

It was very unusual for our mother to open up about, or even vaguely mention mine and Silas's father, and we were all a little shocked that she hadn't fought us more when we'd questioned her.

"Do you think he might still be around here?" Silas asked quietly. Out of the two of us, I knew that he was more sold on the idea of a perfect little family unit, and I knew that if there was any chance of our dad being around here somewhere, Silas would want to find him.

Our mother finally looked up from the apparently oh-so-fascinating work surface, her eyes sympathetic as she regarded my twin brother. "No, Silas. Joe- Joshua... he was never the sort of person to stick around. I thought I would be able to change him, but I was wrong. He left me just like he left Allison and Sam."

"Who are Allison and Sam?" I asked, noting that Silas slumped a little where he was sitting on a stool next to the work surface.

"Allison was Joe's wife before we were married, and Sam... Sam was their son."

* * *

_Ooh! So, as you might be able to tell right about now, this isn't just a romance story. Don't worry, the romance is coming though! You should see a kiss by about... the fourth chapter? But there's going to be a bunch of family stuff in here because dudes, family is important!_

_Anyway, I hope if you've read this you'll review. It makes me sad when nobody reviews :(_

_Ciao, Lily x_


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